Most replayed moment: Coffee vs Matcha | Andrew Kojima & Prof Tim Spector

0:00Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're diving into some popular drinks. Coffee has long been the undisputed champion of hot beverages. Its bitter taste is an essential part of many people's mornings. However, there's a new kid on the block. You might have seen its distinctive green hue cropping up in cafes, supermarkets, even TikTok. I am, of course, talking about matcha. So how do coffee and matcha compare? Do they work differently in the body? And is one better for your long-term health?

0:40I'm joined by matcha expert Andrew Kojima and Professor Tim Spector to explore the science behind our daily pick-me-ups and discover whether we should be switching sides. I think one of the reasons that a lot of people listening think they drink coffee is like they wake up and they really need this energy boost and they think about coffee as this sort of source of that. Is the experience with Matcha different? yes because it's got something else in it apart from caffeine it's got l-theanine and caffeine and l-theanine work in tandem to slightly delay the caffeine release so you still feel stimulated but you also have this sort of sense of calmness and when i drink it i just feel more able to you know when you're being overstimulated by screens and various different ways of people contacting you messages emails whatever i feel much more able to sort of pick them off one by one and i drink coffee and tea and and matcha i see coffee as two things one is yet you know i have the sort of sunday morning get waking up thing i also see coffee as a social thing as you know it's become that um over 25 years matcha i'd like it to be more of a social thing but for me it's a very personal thing i take time out of my day to drink my matcha i also drink coffee when when i'm doing sports, I find that's quite good.

2:01When I'm trying to focus, if I'm trying to sit and write something, I find coffee, I can feel a bit distracted by things. My mind's buzzing a bit too much. I don't find that with matcha. So that's how I differentiate when I drink coffee with matcha. Makes me think of my son who just started drinking coffee recently because my father introduced him to it on a trip, took him to Italy and was like, well, you have to drink coffee now. And he came back and he was just sort of wired each time he had one in the morning because of course, he wasn't used to it, as I think so many of us have sort of got inured.

2:30And it made me realize it's quite a real drug. It was really affecting him. And he decided actually he was going to cut it out for now because it sort of felt like it was too much. And I think that's really interesting the way you describe it against matcha. Tim, are you able to explain at all what might be going on? Yeah. So we're talking about the caffeine amounts in these different products. So you've got the green teas, which have low levels of caffeine in them, sort of 20 to 50 milligrams. Then you've got the matcha, which is the concentrated form, which has about double that, 60 to 90 milligrams on average.

3:01And then coffee goes to 100 to 130 milligrams. So it's a sort of gradient. So you're getting relatively less in there and black tea would be somewhere between matcha and green tea. So you've got a range of these caffeines, but we've been hearing about this other chemical, this L-threonine, which does seem to counteract some of the overstimulatory effects of the caffeine on the mind. And that's why we're going to get on to some of the studies, but it doesn't seem to affect your sleep as much as coffee. So there's another drug here that has been a different effect? Correct. Yes. I mean, obviously in teas and coffees, there are hundreds of chemicals that we're only just discovering, but these are a few that have been isolated.

3:45We think definitely have these brain effects. And so you've got these two competing effects with matcha that are really, really quite fascinating to study and that you can still get some of the benefits of caffeine without it keeping you up at night and making you too wired. And maybe that's why matcha seems to be taking off. I'd actually love to get into that now because I always thought it was the only thing coffee was, was caffeine. And I know Tim that you co-wrote a big new paper with Zoe on this groundbreaking new research on how much coffee can actually transform our gut. And I know that you've also been reading up on the latest research on matcha.

4:24So I'd love to sort of almost measure them up against each other a little bit, because I think for many of our listeners, they're like, okay, how does this compare with this coffee that I'm so used to? Could you tell me about the nutritional differences between coffee and matcha? Yeah. So if we start with fiber, coffee's actually a decent source of fiber 1.5 grams per cup so if you're having three cups a day getting you know four or five grams of fiber about a third of the average intake in the u.s and matcha probably has more fiber in it than coffee it all depends on the amounts you're using but over 50 percent of the matcha powder is actually fiber so if you're putting a tablespoon spoon in, you're going to be getting over 10 grams of fiber.

5:09So fiber is as good, if not better, than coffee. There's less caffeine relatively, but probably still enough to get you up in the morning. It has fats in it that coffee doesn't have. So it's actually a source of omega-3s and these linoleic acids. And these are all healthy fats, interestingly, that have come out. We know that these healthy fats are good for the brain, et cetera. 17 % of it is protein. Everyone's on about protein these days, these relatively small amounts, but it's all good quality, giving you a few grams of protein in there as well. If you take this all together, then actually nutritionally, there's quite a lot of good stuff going on with this match in this concentration that seems to be pretty equivalent to coffee, given what we know.

5:59I think there's lots of things we don't know. Well, there's other chemicals are in there, but interesting that the things that it has that coffee doesn't is it has this L-threonine, which is this other chemical in there that seems to, in studies, maintain sleep quality. So people who are taking, I think it's, they take generally at least about three grams of matcha before going to bed, doesn't seem to stop sleeping as coffee would. The studies show a bit of variability between people, but that's a really encouraging sign. What I really like about matcha is that it's got similar polyphenol levels to coffee.

6:35These defense chemicals that you get from the bean or the leaf or the plant itself. And so, whereas it's more diluted in green tea, you're getting a really concentrated hit of them. And many of them, we still don't understand exactly what they do, but these are great antioxidants. Is there a reason why the matcha might be higher in these polyphenols than your average tea? Well, partly it's because more of it is seeping out into the drink. So you're actually extracting more of them than you would do just by dipping the leaf in. But it could also be the way they're picked and grown. So sometimes from what you're describing, it sounds like the leaf, if you're picking the sort of young leaf rather than the whole leaf, then you're getting more polyphenols in that because it's having to grow faster.

7:27It needs more defenses. So sometimes just selecting the very best quality leaves will also help you there. So some of it is the quality element. It's growing partly in the dark somehow affects us. Yeah, well, maybe, you know, they have a tougher life. So, you know, again, we come back to this idea that if they're struggling to survive, that they're producing the best chemicals that make us healthy. I always love this. It makes me think about us as human beings today, that we live in this environment where for the first time in our history, we're surrounded by food all the time. right? And our ancestors obviously were constantly worrying about starvation.

8:02So at least in the West, you know, we're surrounded by food all the time. And yet weirdly, we're sort of the least healthy we've ever been. And it makes me think of your tea leaves here, Kodj, that you're sort of causing them to suffer with the shade and all the rest of it. And then Tim, you're telling me that actually it gives us the best polyphenols. There's something about how somehow we're not evolved to live in too good an environment. No, that's right. We all need a bit of stress in our lives just got to titrate it. That's what I bring you, Tim. That's why I'm here. Bring us both to stress.

8:36And I know that in your recent paper, you were talking about this like quite significant impact that coffee was having on the gut microbiome. And this might be one of the ways in which it affects our health. Do we know anything about matcha and its effects, you know, beyond the sort of the stimulant that we've been talking about? I couldn't find anything in detail on matcha. There's a little bit on green tea, but I'd love to do some studies. The problem is matcha hasn't really been used much in the West, and so there aren't the big epidemiological studies. So we have to sort of extrapolate a lot of it from just green tea studies.

9:15So we're guessing a lot of the work here is all quite new. There are a few little studies showing it does have definite benefits. We've talked a bit about its anti-caffeine effect. So the idea of the L-threonine means that you're getting decent night's sleep and sleep quality seems to be improved. Some evidence that can reduce stress, as you were suggesting it does for you, in some placebo-controlled studies. So cortisol levels dropping. So some anti-stress effect, I think, is really interesting. And some studies of elderly Japanese, quite a big study, did show cognitive improvements, particularly in the women who were taking not huge amounts, just three grams a day.

10:00So that over a 12-week period. So I think everything is suggesting that it's working this way. Metabolic effect doesn't make you lose weight. They've done some studies on that. It's not a cure for everything. But it's all pointing towards help. it's been touted as an anti-cancer drug i couldn't find any really good evidence yet that it does that but there's reasons theoretically suggest it would do if people followed up and then we did bigger studies so yeah i like the look of matcha it's it's got all the you know the things that we want to see in a in a healthy food you know it's made in this artisan way that's really got no real processing in it.

10:42And it's got all these nutrients of the plants in a really concentrated form. So yeah, I think we're going to see more and more of it. So Tim, what's your final assessment? Is coffee healthier than matcha? Probably we have more evidence that it's healthier at the moment, but I think matcha is great for anyone who doesn't like coffee. Then that's obviously the go-to drink. And I I would urge people who do drink coffee to maybe switch to also having matcha, particularly in the afternoons, et cetera, and start to build up that habit. Because the two together look pretty unbeatable. Tim, I mean, I've done a lot of podcasts with you, and Kaj, he's very rarely that positive about something.

11:23So that's actually really interesting. Because if I play it back, I think you're saying there's not a lot of scientific evidence yet on this in terms of real studies. Short-term studies, but not long-term studies. Got it. So compared to what you often like to talk about, it seems like there's still quite limited evidence, but the underlying properties of it you really like because they tie to things that you know have really good benefits? Well, that's right, because green tea has been studied, and this is just a form of green tea. So if we accept that it's a concentrated high-dose form of green tea, then there's every reason to be optimistic about its health benefits.

11:58I think that's what I'm seeing. And in the last five years, there've been a number of these studies on sleep and mood and cognitive performance that have been very encouraging. So yeah, I'm much more positive about it than I would have been, say, four or five years ago. And my other takeaway, I think, is you probably wouldn't give up coffee for it, given the current data about the health benefits, but perhaps reducing coffee, combining the two, you might be saying is a good outcome. Definitely, yes. My tea time, my British tea time drink, this could be it. I might start having my own little tea ceremony.

12:35Particularly if it's going to be in this calming effect when you're feeling a bit uptight. I think we can use both of these potential health foods, yes. As you can imagine, hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of Daily 30 to my meals every day. If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high-quality, hand-picked plants, including seaweed, fungi, and different types of fiber.

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13:56So, order yours today at zoe.com slash daily30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.